Britain is heading towards disaster with Brexit and Wales is already suffering the consequences of having the Liberal Democrats out of Government, according to the party’s new UK leader.

Vince Cable has taken the reins of the Lib Dems at a time when it has no MPs in Wales and just one Assembly Member.

Mr Cable, who lost his seat in 2015 but returned to the Commons in this year’s snap election, points to the UK Government’s decision – announced as parliament broke up for the summer recess – that the long-awaited electrification of the Great Western main line from Cardiff to Swansea would not go ahead.

He said: “I think it’s one of the many illustrations of how we’ve gone backwards since we moved from a coalition with the Lib Dems in it to a purely Conservative Government. It’s a rather stark reminder that there was a big difference.”

Cable: HS2 shouldn't be at the expense of Welsh rail

The cancellation of electrification to Swansea has triggered outrage

Electrification to Swansea was confirmed in 2012 and was described by one business consultant as the “most significant investment in Welsh rail since the Severn Tunnel”.

Mr Cable said: “I’m a very strong believer in investment in the railways. I don’t think HS2 should be at the expense of good regional investment...

“The southwest and South Wales are particularly badly connected and they should have priority... We shouldn’t be squeezing out big investments that are crucial to the connectivity of Britain and ending the relative isolation of key parts of it like South Wales.

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Cable: Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon should go ahead

The offshore visitor, operations and maintenance building planned for the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon

The energy-generating project was given an enthusiastic thumbs-up by the independent Hendry Review in January but it is still uncertain whether it will become reality.

Mr Cable praised former Conservative Energy Minister Charles Hendry, who led the review, as a “very sensible man”, adding he was “absolutely right”.

He said: “It provides a reliable, relatively cheap source of electricity pretty much indefinitely... It’s exactly the kind of sensible, long-term sustainable energy option which we should be pursuing and I’m very much behind it.”

Describing the delay in the project getting the final go-ahead, he said: “This may be partly as a result of political weakness. It may be Treasury conservatism.

“I don’t want to make too technical a point but what tends to happen is they apply very high discount rates which means that very good long-term projects never happen and this is simply bad economics.”

Cable on Brexit: Disaster could await

Vince Cable lacks confidence in the UK negotiating strategy

Brexit is a top concern for the Lib Dem leader and he has no confidence in the Government’s approach to the negotiations.

He said: “[It’s] absolutely shambolic. It reveals the extent to which the Brexit project was never thought through.

“They didn’t appreciate the level of detail. Pursuing this extreme form of Brexit, which they are doing, is actually a very, very, very complicated business – enormous numbers of regulations, regulatory agencies are having to be reinvented.

“It’s way, way beyond the capacity of the civil service to cope with it and the Government are clearly unprepared for having to have thousands of civil servants even to do the basic minimum. [It] is an absolute, complete and total mess.”

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Cable: A second referendum isn't about redoing the last one

The 2016 referendum divided the country

Making the case for a second referendum, he said: “The Lib Dems have argued what we should be doing right now is trying to keep the positive elements of the European Union – the customs union, the single market, the common approach to research, the regional aid that we benefit from, the strong environmental standards and so on. But if that can’t happen – and I’m pessimistic it will happen – then the public need to have a choice at the end of the negotiations.

“Do you want to press on with Brexit or do you want to stay where we are, and that’s where the second referendum comes in. It isn’t an attempt to redo the last one.

“It’s confronting people with the choices which we will clearly face at the end of the process.”

He is scathing about the UK Labour leadership’s handling of Brexit, saying: “A lot of people, young people especially who got behind Labour at the last election believing they were pro-European are having a very nasty shock.”

Cable on Carwyn's 'independent base'

Carwyn Jones has visited Norway to examine post-Brexit options

First Minister Carwyn Jones has flagged up the example of Norway as an option. The country is not a member of the EU but participates in the single market.

Mr Cable said: “He’s able to because he’s got his own independent base in Wales.”

He argued that if Welsh Labour MPs were “equally independent” then Mr Corbyn’s approach would be “somewhat undermined”.

Pressing for a cross-party approach to Brexit, he said: “I want to see more cross-party collaboration. Our approach is constructive, not destructive.

“We’re happy to work with Labour, Tories, nationalists to just try and get a better outcome because we’re heading to a disaster at the moment.”

A majority of voters in Wales backed Brexit in last year’s referendum but Mr Cable suspects attitudes will change as the impact of losing EU funding is understood.

He said: “Wales is potentially going to be very badly affected... I think as that begins to sink in we get some rethinking.”

A cross-party House of Lords report recently urged the UK Government to “bite the bullet” ahead of Brexit and replace the Barnett formula used to allocate Treasury cash to the Welsh Government with one that reflected the real levels of need in Wales.

Mr Cable said the controversy over Barnett underlined the “unsatisfactory nature of the British constitutional structure,” saying: “We’re sort of halfway to being a federal country and it stirs up these frustration about the allocation of resources.”

He said the £1bn deal negotiated by Northern Ireland DUP to prop up Theresa May’s administration had “made a complete nonsense of any sense of fairness between the different nations of the United Kingdom”.